Who are the top 10 most
important SSD manufacturers? - the companies which you absolutely have to
look at if you've got got any new projects involving SSDs! And who are the
companies most likely to dominate this market?

In the 1st wave of the
SSD market bubble -
the SSD marketing moths are being attracted by the prospect of multiple
analyst
predictions that the SSD market will top $10 billion / year. (Market size
potential 1st published by StorageSearch.com in 2003.)

But the SSD
market won't stop there.

The 2nd wave of the SSD bubble in
2015 to 2019 will
see SSDs being at the center of a new data driven economy in which solid
state storage becomes the prime lever of information systems - instead of
microprocessors and operating systems - as the digital hardware market
progresses on the roadmap to the
petabyte SSD.

Who's
going to dominate the SSD market?

Who are the companies who should be
appearing on your partner or supplier shortlist for further qualification?

I
believe that search volume is the best predictor of where the market is heading
- unlike financial data which tells you where the market has been - typically 12
to 15 months before. The advance visibility from search volume data - if
sampled and interpreted correctly - can give you a 2 to 3 year look ahead into
emerging market trends.

Readers can interpret the listings in the
current and past listings of this article in various ways.

Conservatively
minded readers may prefer to look more closely at SSD companies who have
consistently made good showings in these lists during the past several years.

On
the other hand - early adopters - who are confident in their own abilities to
manage the myriad risks implicit in dealing with newer companies - may prefer
to look at the newest SSD oems who have made appearances in these lists in 1
or 2 recent quarters.

Fusion-io's search volume was 4x higher than the
#10 ranked company, and 77% higher than the #2 ranked company in this
top 10 list.

The prophetic vision Fusion-io proposes for the future of
SSDs is a break away from the ties of legacy HDD form factors and
interfaces as a prerequisite to get the full benefits of the transition to the
SSD accelerated economy.

Regardless of whether they believe in
Fusion-io's version of the
SSD Heresies lots of
other SSD companies are seeing an alluring business opportunity to be had by
following what they do - and the
PCIe SSD market is
starting to resemble the 2.5"
SSD market in the number of companies participating.

The
PCIe SSD market is attractive to vendors because
technical barriers
to entry are low - and the
average selling prices
are multiples of what vendors can get for small form factor SSDs. But with more
than a 2 year market lead, a clutch of important customer qualifications, an
energetic management team and strong funding - this is a company which new
entrants to the market will find tough to beat.

Competitors will
probably have to wait for Fusion-io to make mistakes and
stumble
- to have realistic hopes of achieving the same mind share - or else market in
the gaps which Fusion-io has left behind. These gaps include different
channels to market and selling products to the competitors of Fusion-io's own
oem customers.

STEC
used to be the company which every other SSD company wanted to beat - owning (as
it did for many years) the
top performance slots
for HDD compatible
server flash SSDs - and a sizable chunk of the
military SSD market
too

STEC doesn't sell enterprise SSDs directly to users, instead its
route to market has been to rely on oems to design its SSDs into their
systems - and wait for the sales ramp to happen.

The initial advantage
of that approach (when the SSD
market was smaller than it is today) is that the company did not have to
invest in developing its own routes to market and related marketing
competencies.

The disadvantage - in the current SSD market - is that
the company is vulnerable to being swapped out in design sockets. Additionally -
STEC is poorly positioned to acquire expertise about
rackmount SSDs
(an important market in which its server SSDs are deployed and compete) -
because the company doesn't supply integrated solutions.

One factor
which has helped STEC in recent quarters has been a growing awareness in the SSD
customer community that the company's ability to put on a good show in the
ballet of solid state storage - has been due to hard training and
scientific expertise.
A lot of newer entrants to the SSD market thought the SSD dance was a lot
easier than it actually is - and have come
crashing down onto
the market stage after performing a few short pirouettes. Competitors may learn
a few more technical tricks - but they cannot easily contend with the mystical
nature of STEC's legendary reputation for performing impressively season
after season.

The arcane world of SSD controllers - which was once
invisible to most end users - with critical product data safely hidden behind
firewalls - is now turning into a merchant market with nearly 30 companies
supplying the critical IP needed to design your own SSD.

SandForce was
the 1st company to offer
symmetric R/W
IOPS in a 2.5" flash SSD form factor in Q2
2009 - and its
products offered impressive performance.

In June 2010 - a
new SSD company - called Anobit
announced technology which encroaches on SandForce's market turf. Will Anobit
become as well known as SandForce? Unless you're an SSD designer - your brain
has no real need to hold 2 such pieces of information.

Foremay
made no significant new SSD product announcements in this quarter. But a lot of
other SSD competitors in the 2.5" SSD market did announce product plans to
ship PCIe SSDs and join Foremay in this dual play hedge your bets SSD
marketing game.

In May 2010
- RunCore started
sampling 2.5" and
3.5"SAS flash SSDs for the
enterprise server market. The Kylin II product line, available with
MLC, EMLC or SLC
flash, has R/W speeds upto 270MB/s and 260MB/s respectively, R/W
IOPS of
30,000 and 25,000, upto 400GB capacity and 3 years warranty.

Despite
my initial skepticism about OCZ's stated aspirations to become an "enterprise
SSD" company - the company's has continued knocking on the door which
leads to the datacenter market with a series of gradually better product
announcements - undeterred by my reactions to its embarrassingly
inappropriate initial models.

But can a company - which has only been
in the SSD market a short time (since
March 2008)
really persuade conservative enterprise buyers that it should be taken
seriously? A lot of OCZ's SSD technology is bought in from various sources in
the SSD IP market -
and tailored for what the company's marketers think customers will buy. The
ability to spot a real market gap and fill it quickly with sound products - will
be one of the key factors determining success in the fastly inflating
SSD market bubble.

In
June 2010 -
OCZ unveiled the RevoDrive
a bootable
PCIe SSD with R/W
speeds up to 540MB/s and 530MB/s respectively and 75,000
IOPS.

Waiting in the wings - just below the top 10 in this period
were:- PhotoFast
(down 1 place at #11), Violin
Memory (#12 - possibly heading for a re-entry after a long absence), and
Pliant Technology
(#13 - still waiting to get called onto the top 10 stage).

How to interpret the
rankings?

The
most important thing is being included in the list rather than the position
within it. As the number of SSD oems has grown - it's much harder than it used
to be to break into the top 10.

I sometimes get emails from SSD product
managers griping about the validity of these lists. My reply is that
it's a marketing reality they have to live with. Just as being ranked #1 or #90
on Google could make a big difference to your company - our SSD rankings have
tracked millions of readers since they started.

High rankings
mean that more people in the market are interested in learning more about what
you're saying. On the other hand - if your business plan is to be a leading
shaker in the SSD market and your company has never appeared in these lists -
then you have an uphill struggle - and success could take a lot longer than you
think.